Report: Fun Fun Fun Fest Day 1 (11-4)

The Good, The Bad and the Dirty: opening day, Nov. 4, 2011

Photos/Text by Michael Passman

Fun Fun Fun Fest (FFFF) is like the early Lollapalooza.  It's big, and there's all sorts of weirdness going on.  Lollapalooza captured mainly alternative college rock.  Now, almost every genre of music is alternative!  FFFF mixes puts everyone from techno to hip hop to punk, death metal, comedy, and back again into four stages that run from noon to 10.  The organizers have had so much fun the past five years with acts like The Cynics, The Gories, Dead Milkmen, Weird Al, and other assortments of happy mayhem that they couldn't leave well enough alone, so they moved to a bigger outdoor area and added an extra day this year just in case you couldn't get enough in two days of tacos and beer.

Starting Friday afternoon, people descended upon Austin's Auditorium Shores, gathered together, and witnessed great afternoon shows.  Everywhere one's ears pointed, one heard music.  Americana rockers The Heartless Bastards gave a great performance in the afternoon sun to a large crowd for a Friday Afternoon. (Go here to see our report from Day 2.)

1 PIC: Heartless Bastards, 11/4/11, Orange Stage

A slight trip over to The Blue Stage caught me with YACHT doing a pretty impressive cover of The B-52's Mesopotamia.  It was a nice little treat, but a good illustration of what one finds at FFFF.

2: PIC  YACHT

Poppy alt. rock darlings The Thermals followed up and gave a performance that encapsulated Austin's Live Music Capitol of The World Title with the looming high rises and the late afternoon sun behind them. 

3 PIC: The Thermals, 11/4/11, Orange Stage

But let's face it: Rock ‘n' roll is not only a dirty sound, but a dirty business.  It was only fitting that the first two days of FFFF take place in a dust storm.  I switched from the more open, breezy sounds and the skyline view of The Orange Stage to head over and check out the raunchier sounds of The Black Stage, which was all the way across the park.  The Black Stage?  You get the picture.  This is what I encountered:

4 PIC:  Security in dust, 11/4/11 the Black Stage

The raunchy, low fi garage rock of Ty Segall, Followed by the similar but heavier psych leanings of The Oh Sees were loud enough to pierce through the ever growing dust rising up from the pit and going in every direction.  The Oh Sees front man John Dwyer gave an always amazing performance with his green Burns 12 string sitting just below his neck.

5 Pics: John Dwyer

The sunset came later on the orange stage with the soft light fading while the stage lights slowly came up During Okkervill River's uptempo folk/rock.  It seemed like they took the honor of opening the evening and FFFF itself for the growing number of people just entering the festival gates.

6 Pics: Okkervill River

I wandered then back to The Black Stage to catch Seattle punk legends Murder City Devils, who never disappoint both in quality and volume.  They had a fabulous, loud, raucous, and crowd pleasing set.  It was especially surprising to see vocalist Spencer Moody have such a powerful presence as a punk frontman given his ginger beard and lumberjack wardrobe.  They were really, really tight.  The whole band seemed more in sync with each other than most bands I've seen.

7 PIC:  Murder City Devils

The evening was to end with Passion Pit, Danzig Legacy, and Public Enemy on three of the four stages.  Neither Danzig nor Public Enemy allowed photos.  Public Enemy started off a little shaky, but got better as the evening progressed.  It was a good thing they did.  Many people wandered over to see them from the pathetic performance and now legendary drama of Danzig and found out what punk was all about.  In case you're wondering, Danzig's prima donna antics from the onion soup to the heaters to the deathbug whining can be read in many other places by now.  I'm not giving him any more mention, or press.

The sound at Auditorium Shores ends at 10pm sharp, but the night was young.  I caught a stellar performance from Austin natives Spoon at Club 501, where they performed a nice chunk of their more rocking, older material.

8 PIC: Spoon.

It's hard to catch Spoon at a small venue anymore, so the moody lighting and feel of the  place made the performance special, and the band felt it.

9 Pic: Spoon

It was midnight.  I headed over to The Beauty Bar to catch the legendary Mister Rhythm himself, André Williams.  He took the stage with his touring act and a few burlesque dancers.  When we heard "Hey Mother Fuckers!" and shouted it back, we knew we were in for a treat. 

10 PIC: Andre

André and his band were tight, fierce, and dripping with hot soul stinking nastiness.  After all, that IS André Williams!  It was a much younger crowd than usual for him, but as expected, he made converts right and left.  It was a sight to see and hear the whole crowd, mostly of twenty something girls singing the chorus "Pussy stank, but so does marijuana!" like the knew it!

11 Pic: Andre 2